Leonard’s Newsletters

Less than half of those who take the math part of the GED test fail it the first time. So what makes the math test the most difficult?

First of all, the math test covers the broadest range of knowledge of any test. It includes number sense and operations, measurement, data analysis, geometry and algebra.

Second and most important, the math test is a test of knowledge and facts, not critical thinking skills as the Science, Reading and Social Studies tests are. You really have to know the math to pass.

The good news is that the scoring for the math test is the easiest; you need only to get 45% of the answers correct to pass, that’s less than half right.

What do you need to pass? Here’s a good strategy for passing the math test.

1. Don’t sweat the algebra questions. At most there are 3, maybe 4 questions that deal with pure algebra. If you missed all of these, and did okay on the rest, you would easily pass the test. You could spend a lot of time relearning algebra and still miss a couple of the questions. Why? Because the algebra questions will expect you to do fairly advanced algebra and it’s hard to learn this from a GED book, or even our online courses. There’s just too much to learn.

2. Go back to the basics. If you can do simple number operations, measurement, and some data analysis in abstract and word problem forms you will do fine on the GED tests. So spending lots of time on the basics will help you most.

The other thing that will help is getting lots of practice with word problems. Over 70% of the questions on math test are stated as math word problems. What you want to do is develop a basic word solving strategy that allows you to identify what you need to solve. Our math unit on Number Sense and Operations will teach you a basic word problem strategy that follows the structure of computer gaming… something that makes sense to everyone, even those who don’t play computer games.

3. Learn to pace yourself and not waste time on questions you can’t answer. Your goal is to get 25 to 30 questions correct out of 50 (a little over 50%). You’ll have 1-1/2 hours to complete the math tests. The test is split into two parts, one with the use of the calculator, one without.

If you allow yourself no more than 2 minutes on each question YOU THINK YOU CAN SOLVE, this will give you plenty of time to make sure it’s correct. Therefore, your first step with each question is to decide if it’s something you can actually solve. On the first reading if it looks too hard, skip it and go on to the next problem. But use a guessing strategy to make an attempt at the answer (see the next issue of my newsletter). A good guessing strategy can get 10% – 15% correct answers even if you no idea what the correct answer is. On the math test this would give you an extra 5 – 7 correct answers, probably the difference of passing or not passing for many folks.

Our math courses, they’re three of them now, will help you learn the basics as well as more advanced math. They include hundreds of practice problems. Couple this with the online practice test to give yourself even more practice. I’ve found that working with actual GED questions and then going back to relearn forgotten material is the best overall strategy.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.